Antony was deaf to Cleopatra’s advice; and at length accepting the proposal conveyed by the King of Pontus, he prepared to set out at once for the north-east. Thereupon Cleopatra made up her mind to accompany him; and in the late spring they set out together for Syria. No sooner had they arrived in that country, however, than Antony received the disconcerting news that his Roman wife Octavia was on her way to join him once more, and proposed to meet him in Greece. It appears that her brother Octavian had chosen this means of bringing his quarrel with Antony to an issue; for if she were not well received he would have just cause for denouncing her errant husband as a deserter; and in order to show how justly he himself was dealing he despatched with Octavia two thousand legionaries and some munitions of war. As a matter of fact the legionaries served actually as a bodyguard for Octavia,[100] while their ultimate presentation to Antony was to be regarded partly as a payment for the number of his ships which had been destroyed in Octavian’s war against Sextus, and partly as a sort of formal present from one autocrat to another. Antony at once sent a letter to Octavia telling her to remain at Athens, as he was going to Media; and in reply to this Octavia despatched a family friend, named Niger, to ask Antony what she should do with the troops and supplies. Niger had the hardihood to speak openly in regard to Octavia’s treatment, and to praise her very highly for her noble and quiet bearing in her great distress; but Antony was in no mood to listen to him, and sent him about his business with no satisfactory reply. At the same time he appears to have been very sorry for Octavia, and there can be little doubt that, had such a thing been possible, he would have liked to see her for a short time, if only to save her from the added insult of his present attitude. He was an irresponsible boy in these matters, and so long as everybody was happy he really did not care very deeply which woman he lived with, though he was now, it would seem, extremely devoted to Cleopatra, and very dependent upon her lively society.
The Queen, of course, was considerably alarmed by this new development, for she could not be sure whether Antony would stand by the solemn compact he had made with her at Antioch, or whether he would once more prove a fickle friend. She realised very clearly that the insult offered to Octavia would precipitate the war between East and West, and she seems to have felt even more strongly than before that Antony would be ill advised at this critical juncture to enter into any further Parthian complication. To her mind it was absolutely essential that she should carry him safely back to Alexandria, where he would be, on the one hand, well out of reach of Octavia, and, on the other, far removed from the temptation of pursuing his Oriental schemes. Antony, however, was as eager to be at his old enemy once more as a beaten boy might have been to revenge himself upon his rival; and the thought of giving up this opportunity for vengeance in order to prepare for an immediate fight with Octavian was extremely distasteful to him. Everything now seemed to be favourable for a successful invasion of Parthia. Not only had he the support of the King of Media, but the fickle King of Armenia had thought it wise at the last moment to make his peace with Antony, and the new agreement was to be sealed by the betrothal of his daughter to Antony’s little son Alexander Helios. Cleopatra, however, did not care so much about the conquest of Parthia as she did for the overthrow of her son’s rival, who seemed to have usurped the estate which ought to have passed from the great Cæsar to Cæsarion and herself; and she endeavoured now, with every art at her disposal, to prevent Antony taking any further risk in the East, and to urge his return to Alexandria. “She feigned to be dying of love for Antony,” says Plutarch, “bringing her body down by slender diet. When he entered the room she fixed her eyes upon him in adoration, and when he left she seemed to languish and half faint away. She took great pains that he should see her in tears, and, as soon as he noticed it, she hastily dried them and turned away, as if it were her wish that he should know nothing of it. Meanwhile Cleopatra’s agents were not slow to forward her design, upbraiding Antony with his unfeeling hard-hearted nature for thus letting a woman perish whose soul depended upon him and him alone. Octavia, it was true, was his wife; but Cleopatra, the sovereign queen of many nations, had been contented with the name of his mistress,[101] and if she were bereaved of him she would not survive the loss.”